Amongst the illusions entertained by a certain class of
Catholics, there is none more pitiable than the notion that the
truth requires a great number of defenders and friends. To these
people number seems a synonym for force. They imagine that to
multiply heterogeneous quantities is to multiply power.

Now, true force, real power in the physical as in the moral
order, consists in intensity rather than in extension. A greater
volume of matter equally intense evidently produces a greater
effect, not by reason of the increased volume, but by virtue of
the augmented intensities contained in it. It is therefore a rule
of sound mechanics to seek to increase the extension and number
of forces, but always on the condition that the final result be a
real augmentation of their intensities. To be content with an
increase without consideration of the value of the increment is
not only to accumulate fictitious force, but to expose the
powers, with one does possess, to be paralyzed by the congestion
of an unwieldy mass. The millions of Xeroxes constituted force of
tremendous extension, but they were of no avail against the
vigorous intensity of the Greek three hundred at Thermopylae.

Faith possesses a power of its own which it communicates to
its friends and defenders. It is not they who give the truth
power, but truth which charges them with its own vigor. This on
the condition that they use that power in its defense.

If the defender, under the pretext of better defending the
truth, begins to mutilate it, minimize it, to attenuate it, then
he is no longer defending the truth. He is simply defending his
own invention, a mere human creation more or less beautiful in
appearance, but having no relation to truth, the daughter of
Heaven.

Such is the delusion of which many of our brethren are the
unconscious victims through a detestable contact with Liberalism.

They imagine, with blinded good faith, that they are defending
and propagating Catholicity. But by dint of accommodating it to
their own narrow views and feeble courage, in order to make it,
they say, more acceptable to the enemy, whom they wish to
overcome, they do not perceive that they are no longer defending
Catholicity but a thing of their own manufacture which they
naively call Catholicity, but which (161) they ought to call by
another name. Poor victims of selfdeception, who at the beginning
of the battle, in order to win over the enemy wet their own
powder and blunt the edge and the point of their swords! They do
not stop to reflect that an edgeless and pointless sword is no
longer a weapon but a useless piece of old iron, and that wet
powder cannot be fired.

Their journals, their books, their discourses, veneered with
Catholicity but bereft of its spirit and its life, have no more
value in the cause of the faith than the toy swords and pistols
of the nursery.

To an army of this kind, be it ten times as numerous as the
multitudinous hosts of Xeroxes, a single platoon of wellarmed
soldiers, knowing what they are defending, against whom they are
contending, and with what arms they fight, in order to defend the
truth, is preferable a thousand times over. This is the kind of
soldiers we need. This is the kind who have always and will yet
do something more for the glory of His Name. They go into the
deadly, imminent breach and never flinch. No compromising, no
minimizing with them. They plant their banner on the topmost
height and form a solid, invincible phalanx around it, that not
all the legions of earth and hell combined can budge a (162)
single inch. They make no alliance, no compromise with a foe,
whose single aim, disguised or open, is the destruction of the
truth. They know the enemy is by nature implacable, and his flag
of truce but a cunning device of treachery.

Of this we will become more and more convinced, if we consider
that an alliance of this kind with a false auxiliary is not only
useless to the good Christian in the midst of the combat, but
moreover it is most of the time an actual embarrassment to him
and favorable to the enemy. Catholic associations hampered in
their onward march by such an alliance, will find themselves so
impeded that free action becomes impossible. They will end by
having all their energies crushed under a deadly inertia. To
bring an enemy into the camp is to betray the citadel. It was not
until the Trojans admitted the fatal wooden horse within the city
walls that Illium fell. This combination of the bad with the good
cannot but end in evil results. It brings disorder, confusion,
suspicion, uncertainty to distract and divide Catholics, and all
this to the benefit of the enemy and our disaster.

Against such a course la Civilta Cattolica, in some remarkable
articles, has emphatically declared. Without the proper (163)
precaution, it says, "associations of this kind (Catholic)
run the certain danger, not only of becoming a camp of scandalous
discord, but also of wandering away from their true principles to
their own ruin and the great injury of religion." And this
same review, whose authority is of the greatest possible weight,
in regard to the same subject says: "With a prudent
understanding, Catholic associations ought chiefly to take care
to exclude from amongst themselves, not only those who openly
profess the principles of Liberalism, but also those who have
deceived themselves into believing that a conciliation between
Liberalism and Catholicism is possible, and who are known as
Liberal Catholics."